


Defeated

by AuroraNoirInStardust



Category: Troades | The Trojan Women - Euripides, Troy (2004)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Especially now that I am a mother, Heavy Angst, I actually got to play her, Inner Dialogue, One Shot, Other, Prose Poem, it killed me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 21:31:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNoirInStardust/pseuds/AuroraNoirInStardust
Summary: Before Talthybius arrives to tell Andromache the unthinkable, she recounts all she's been through. Written as a poem and as a character study in college when I played Andromache in acting class. 10 years later, I actually played her in a full production and looking back on this helped me slide right back into her skin.





	Defeated

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted this to fanfiction.net under my username WalkingInStardust and thought I'd add it to the mix here. Plus, I haven't used FF.net in over 10 years and the formatting is all wonky on all my stuff.

I stand utterly defeated. What else must I endure?  
Oh, gods! Why torment me thus?  
Ever have I been faithful; always honored you.  
I held my husband,  
my dear Hector,  
above all.  
Never did my eyes wander,  
never did I long for another's embrace.  
We found pure love that so few find.  
Through that love, we conceived a son,  
the heir to the throne of Troy-  
this beautiful child with  
his father's deep and tender eyes  
who clings to my dress in fear.

Our country is sacked by war.  
Our men rot in the streets.  
Our beautiful city is now an inferno.

Wailing women  
remind me I share in there sorrows,  
beyond that of our fallen city.  
We are now widowed sisters of war.

I stood by,  
helpless on the high city wall,  
as the sweet skin of Hector's neck,  
which I had kissed in passion  
but the night before,  
was pillaged by a Greek spear;  
Hector's chest,  
my resting place and sanctuary  
run through by an Achaean sword.  
His dying cry has become  
the drumbeat of my nightmares.

Achilles...  
that monster...  
I shall **never** forgive him!

Every time I close my eyes  
his golden sword drips rubies  
and my Hector's body is  
again dragged though the sands of the plain  
by rope stitched through his flesh. 

Achilles' trophy.

Our hero.

My world.

Now...  
whispers of a horror  
yet to come.  
My son,  
my fragment of Hector, is in danger.  
The Greeks are weeding our the royal house-  
brave Priam, love-blinded Paris, innocent Polyxena;  
meeting their fate upon a Greek blade.  
With my son, the royal blood dries up.

I remember now  
a moment at Astyanax's birth:  
_the royal palace in celebration,_  
_but Cassandra white_  
_as the marble wall she leaned upon,_  
_eyes fixed in horror upon my newborn son._

What did she see?

Insane though she is, the horror she once prophesied  
is upon us.  
I cannot thrust this thought from my mind:  
Was that brutal image in her mind's eye  
also a moment of precognition?

I pick up my boy  
and cradle his head to my breast  
as a soldier in Greek armor  
part the sea of sobbing women,  
calling for "The wife of brave Hector".


End file.
